Shoppers storm downtown mall for frosty show

Some families make the visit a holiday tradition

ANDREA JAME, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By ANDREA JAMES, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, December 3, 2007

Faux snow falls on Christmas carolers at Pacific Place in Seattle the day after Thanksgiving. The snow shows are in two dozen shopping centers worldwide.
Photo: Joshua Trujillo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

For a moment each evening at Pacific Place from now until Christmas Eve, delight will be captured by a sound -- a chorus of "Ooh!" and "Ah!" and "Oh!" -- upon the crowd's realization that it is snowing -- indoors.

For 10 magical minutes, the downtown shopping atrium is transformed into a giant snow globe. Children crane their necks, stick out their tongues and dance, white flakes fall upon crowns and eyelashes, and folks whip out cameras and cell phones to capture the scene.

Now in its fourth year, the nightly snowfalls are becoming a Seattle tradition -- as looked forward to and planned for as the lightings of the Macy's star and the Westlake Center tree.

At this year's first snowfall the day after Thanksgiving, 4 1/2-year-old Dominique Monroe knew what to expect. The West Seattle girl has been watching the snow since she was young enough to ride on her parents' shoulders.

Her dark curls bounced as she squirmed in her jogging stroller shortly before 6 p.m.

"Santa Claus is coming. Some of the snow is gonna fall down!" she told her parents, Daren and Nicole Monroe.

Even while the show gains popularity, the secret behind the snowfall remains. The show is part of an illusion created by Los Angeles-based MagicSnow Systems LLC. Company president Adam Williams -- a magician by trade -- invented the snow formula especially for the Seattle shopping center.

Though the formula is proprietary, the company assures that it is mostly water, non-toxic and doesn't stain.

Indeed, the snow leaves no puddles and vanishes before it hits the ground. A Seattle P-I tongue-testing found that it tastes suspiciously like soap.

Neither Williams nor the shopping center is releasing details -- both insist that the snow is magic.

"It really is an illusion on a grand scale," Pacific Place marketing manager Lynn Beck said. "People are just mesmerized. They go to the railings, they go to the center atrium, and all of a sudden they become part of the illusion."

The Seattle mall's request was a first for the California magician. Before 2004,Williams had never made an indoor snow show on a grand scale. His specialty was creating snowfalls for outdoor malls in warm locales.

"If we were to spray real snow onto an audience, it would definitely create a dangerous environment," said Williams, 32.

Before allowing the show to go live, Williams said he had to prove to Pacific Place management that the snow would not ruin floors nor customer clothing.

"Half of the magic is seeing the snow, and the other half is the fact that when you touch it and when it finally lands, it disappears completely," he said. "That's really what makes our special effect pretty incredible."

The company, started in 2002, installs snow shows in two dozen shopping centers worldwide, as well as on cruise ships. The shows are choreographed with music and automated lighting.

In Pacific Place, a mint scent has been added to the formula to make it seem colder, Williams said. Three more indoor malls have followed suit with snow shows -- near Washington, D.C., in Boston and in Germany.

The price is confidential, but costs the same as having a live band or singers every night for the holidays, Williams said.

Pacific Place's goal was to create a new tradition and keep people shopping during the hours when foot traffic usually starts to taper, Beck said.

"We do see an uptick in the traffic numbers around the snow," Beck said.

The local man who runs the show is 33-year-old Seattleite Ixaac Ackley, who holds a contract with MagicSnow. He arrives 30 minutes early each night to test the machines.

"It's really nerve-racking right before the show goes off," Ackley said.

"You get the sense that there's thousands of people waiting to see it snow."

He's right.

About 20 minutes before this year's first snowfall, Yvonne Zick marched out to a spot bottom-center, and said to her family, "I think we should set up here."

Her husband, Ken, held 3- year-old Bodhi on his shoulders, and 13-year-old Orion gathered close. The four from Vashon Island have worked the snowfall into their holiday tradition and didn't want to get crowded out.

Though a lot of other children ate snow, Orion wasn't taking any chances. "I usually don't touch anything that's falling from the sky," he said.

Annie Alldredge, 24, of Queen, Anne also waited. She plopped down on the floor between two friends.